Grace period for rental car pickup

[ni92692]

Anyone have experience picking a rental car up earlier than scheduled? Is that allowed or what goes into that? I have a UT reservation through budget that was scheduled for pickup at noon but now will be wanting to get it around 9:00am. It would likely be returned around that same time.

 

[Arthur92]

if the rental is there at 9am you can get the car but now your return time is changed to 9am. that's how it worked for me when I had arrived earlier than planned

 

[_19disnA]

Haven't rented recently, but I get the impression rental car inventories are still very tight. If you show up much earlier then your reservation time, could be an issue that the car they planned to assign you hasn't yet returned from a prior rental.

I believe your rental period starts when you actually take possession of the car regardless of the reservation time. In the past I usually put down a time about 1 hr before I expected to arrive so the car would be available.

 

[keishashadow]

OP will ask the obvious, did you price out the rental with the new, correct time you want to pick it up? Might want to give UT a call & ask

my understanding is all rental car companies have varying policies on this early & late pickup changes. Buried in their websites or you could call & verify the specifics.

I‘ve never had a problem picking up our reserved vehicle a bit earlier/later if just an hour or so. Once we had a flight delayed for almost 6 hours, I had no problem upon arrival, however, I had flight info linked to the res to prove why we were not on time. NatIonal honored that rate, however, it was before the pandemic shortage.

inventory is still rather limited at MCO at times (this going by what I’m seeing on the Alamo aisle and rates they all are charging).

You may very well find yourself waiting for a car…as in one might need to be returned, cleaned etc. I’ve asked before, was told they try to have them ready an hour ahead of time.

 

[Cheburashka]

I had this issue the last time I rented via UT, when I was considering changing my flight. I called them to ask, and was told I'd have to make a new reservation to change the time. I ended up not changing the flight or changing my UT reservation.

 

[ni92692]

OP will ask the obvious, did you price out the rental with the new, correct time you want to pick it up? Might want to give UT a call & ask

my understanding is all rental car companies have varying policies on this early & late pickup changes. Buried in their websites or you could call & verify the specifics.

I‘ve never had a problem picking up our reserved vehicle a bit earlier/later if just an hour or so. Once we had a flight delayed for almost 6 hours, I had no problem upon arrival, however, I had flight info linked to the res to prove why we were not on time. NatIonal honored that rate, however, it was before the pandemic shortage.

inventory is still rather limited at MCO at times (this going by what I’m seeing on the Alamo aisle and rates they all are charging).

You may very well find yourself waiting for a car…as in one might need to be returned, cleaned etc. I’ve asked before, was told they try to have them ready an hour ahead of time.

Thank you for the information. I reached out to UT regarding the reservation and they told me I would need to cancel the current reservation and make a new one. There would be no change in the price for the reservation. The customer service rep even provided me a direct link to make a new reservation without having to buy a new "ticket" to be eligible for the discount. I tried to reach out to Budget but didn't have much success. At the time I booked the original car reservation, I did not have my flight purchased to base it off of that.

 

[Disneybuckeye]

Last December we had a rental car booked to pick up at 8pn. Our flights were changed and we got in at 9am instead. I had paid in advance and we picked up our car as soon as we arrived and had no issues. We did return it by 9am on our departure day (that was out drop off time originally) so it was still the total days did not change.

 

[RMO87]

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